The World Wide Web

Introduction

The World Wide Web or WWW (pronounced dub-dub-dub) for short is the name used to represent an Internet-based service in which Web agents or clients (a.k.a Web Browsers) communicate with Web servers utilizing HTTP request and response messages. To initiate the process, a Web browser sends an HTTP request to a Web server; usually the request is for an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) file located on the Web server. If the Web server locates the file it returns the contents of the HTML file in the body of an HTTP response message addressed to the Web browser on the device where the request was initiated.

Other technologies which might be incorporated into the process of sending Web pages from Web server to Web browsers are mostly technologies related to the creation of the HTML document and the data it contains. For instance, Cascading Style Sheets can be created to change the appearance of the contents in an HTML document at runtime within the Web browser. Another example would be the use of JavaScript programming to manipulate the contents of an HTML document and create interactive user experiences that are processed within the Web browser. In the most sophisticated environments, HTML pages can be created dynamically based on criteria placed in the request message the Web browser sends to the Web server.

These technologies can be organized into three categories, client-side technologies - related-to or processed-in a Web browser, server-side technologies - related-to or processed-in a Web Server, and data communications technologies - related-to or processed-by an http service.

This section consists of numerous tutorials all related to the creation of Web content: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.NET, and SQL; and distribution of that content via the HTTP protocol.

Fundamental Concepts of the World Wide Web (WWW)

Web Development Stack